Southwest cancels 60 percent of flights

Southwest Airlines canceled more than 70 percent of its flights on Monday and more than 60 percent of flights Tuesday after a nationwide storm caused cancellations to snowball. American, United, Delta, and JetBlue canceled between zero and two percent of their flights Tuesday. Southwest officials said the storm caused thousands of cancellations because flight crews couldn’t get to the right airports in time. Airlines canceled as many as 20 percent of flights over the weekend because of intense snowfall in some places. Buffalo Niagara International Airport remained closed Tuesday.

Is anyone looking into it? The Department of Transportation said the disparity between the number of flights Southwest canceled compared to other airlines prompted an investigation into the rate of cancellations. The department is looking into whether Southwest could have done anything about the cancellations and whether the airline is fulfilling its obligations to customers. The president of the union representing Southwest pilots blamed scheduling software written in the 1990s. He also compared the cancellations to a similar situation in October 2021.

Dig deeper: Listen to Mary Reichard’s report in the Legal Docket podcast on a Southwest Airlines flight attendant fired for expressing pro-life beliefs.